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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Re-Establishing Italo-Ethiopian Relations after the War: Old Prejudices and New Policies
Author:Calchi Novati, GiampaoloISNI
Year:1996
Periodical:Northeast African Studies
Volume:3
Issue:1
Pages:27-49
Language:English
Geographic terms:Ethiopia
Italy
Subjects:foreign policy
1950-1959
History and Exploration
colonialism
international relations
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/northeast_african_studies/v003/3.1.novati.pdf
Abstract:After the Second World War, the 1947 Peace Treaty with Italy recognized the independence and sovereignty of Ethiopia. However, Ethiopia and Italy re-established diplomatic relations in 1951 only after lengthy negotiations. The laboriousness of the normalization of relations is explained partly by the fate of Italian colonies in Africa (Eritrea and Somalia), but also by mutual psychological misunderstanding. Italy was anxious to reassert her influence, but did not want to make economic and political concessions. For its part, the Addis Ababa government, remembering Italian aggression, demanded that the period of colonialism be formally closed. The first official Italo-Ethiopian contact took place only after the UN General Assembly voted that Eritrea was to be an autonomous territory federated with Ethiopia (December 1950). The Italo-Ethiopian rapprochement came at a moment when Italian interests, including those in Eritrea, became subordinate to the higher aims of the international environment. As far as Eritrea was concerned, the UN made its decisions more out of consideration for the general strategic picture than for the national rights of the people in the former colony. During 1952-1956 negotiations stretched out over payment of war reparations to Ethiopia and the return of art - notably the obelisk of Axum - confiscated during the Italian occupation. Notes, ref.
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